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is this a good idea or not?

I wraped my hives with black felt(tarpaper) then styrofoam on 3 sides on the so. I built a 2 in frame and put a storm window over it, lets sun in and cold and wind off. any harm? Today 11-14-12 it was near 50 degrees and about 100 bees out, on another note , I watched for about 15 min and saw 3 bees come in with pollen and at least 4 drones

Re: is this a good idea or not?

No they will use more stores because they will be more active and there for eat more. With in reason, cold doesn't kill, moisture does. So insulating the top to keep it from being a place for condensation to start will give you the most mileage.

Re: is this a good idea or not?

I disagree. "Warmer", is not specific enough to reach that conclusion. In Canada B's are wintered indoors, they are kept, "Warmer". From my reading it seems that mid 40's is a temp where B's will cluster naturally, but not have to work to hard to survive. My observations of nests in trees leads me to conclude that you cannot over insulate.
Cheers,
Drew

Re: is this a good idea or not?

I disagree. "Warmer", is not specific enough to reach that conclusion. My observations of nests in trees leads me to conclude that you cannot over insulate.
Cheers,
Drew

I have never seen a tree insulated with tarpaper, styfrofoam, or a storm window. Bees in the wild are not protected from the elements. Wesbee, My concern with this idea is that you may have them so protected and "warm" form the actual outside temperature that it is creating an inside problem. As pointed out by rweakley, if you do not have anything at the top to collect moisture, or disperse it to the sides of the hive bodies (i.e insulated top cover), I would think this is a bad idea.

Re: is this a good idea or not?

Originally Posted by fieldsofnaturalhoney

I have never seen a tree insulated with tarpaper, styfrofoam, or a storm window

I've never seen a tree cavity with 3/4" thick smooth planed walls either.

I agree w/Drew. "Warmer" is not specific enough. I will try to find the paper with the graph that displays this, but I'm almost positive the least amount of honey is used around the 40-45F mark, so keeping the air inside the hive at this temperature will cause the bees to use the least amount of honey. At some temperature above this you'll use more, but it'll be equal to the amount of honey they'd use at some temperature below. The graph will show this (provided I can find it).

Re: is this a good idea or not?

See figure 2 on the right hand side. As you can see, above 10C (50F) the metabolism rises more sharply than it does on the other side of the curve, but it still rises on the other side of the curve. Keeping them at 5-10C (40-50F) will keep the metabolism needs at the lowest point. To Wesbee, you're probably warming it higher than that right now, but for how cold your ambient outdoor temps probably are up there in Wisconsin in the winter, I don't believe you need to worry about exceeding that 40-50 very much if at all. I might think about pulling the window away until you get deeper into your winter temps for right now.

Re: is this a good idea or not?

Again I have to disagree, B's in the wild are most certainly well protected from the elements in most cases. I have seen nests hanging from branches in the open but I think this is not the norm. Mostly they like well protected places like a hollow tree. I have three sections of hollow poplar trunk that I cut a colony out of this summer, the nest has 4-5" of solid wood + thin layer of greenwood + bark all around. Not sure what the R-value of this would be, but I suspect that it is substantial.
Cheers,
Drew

Re: is this a good idea or not?

There is a big difference between "cold" and "wet". The bees handle cold pretty well but suffer greatly when you add wet to the mix. I have a shed that I winter the hives in my "home" yard in. This shed only has 3 walls and I place about a dozen hives in it. I do nothing with these hives except add an upper entrance/vent. My bees do really well in this shed usually less than 10% loss. In my other yards I have gotten to the point of just trying to keep the rain off. I've found that I had no better success with wrapping and insulating than just keeping them dry. I keep my hives on stands that allow me to place 4 hives next to each other. In winter prep I shove them tight against each other (about 1" gap) and staple tar paper from the bottom of the end hive over the top of all 4 and down to the bottom of the other end. I place my bricks on top and staple enough to keep the wind from blowing it off. I cut the upper entrance/vent hole in the tar paper and I'm done. About 2/3 of the front and back are left exposed. I can do this way faster and seem to be successfullly wintering the same as when I was completely wrapping them up. When I don't cover them at all they tend to have quite a lot more moisture inside and I have more die offs.

Again......moisture is a much greater concern than cold....in my opinion anyway.

Re: is this a good idea or not?

Originally Posted by Maryland Beekeeper

Again I have to disagree, B's in the wild are most certainly well protected from the elements in most cases.
Cheers,
Drew

Protected naturally from wherever/whatever they decided to build their home in, sure. My point is beekeepers add all of this extra insulating stuff on the outside of the hive when it is not necessary, and do not think about what it is going to do to the inside (i.e venilation, inside temperature compared to outside temperature). As pointed out, it is condensation/wet bees that should be the concern. Wesbee, I think that should be your main concern, especially with that window over the hive.

Re: is this a good idea or not?

it seems pretty defined that the metabolic rate of bees is lowest in an environment of 40 deg F (5C).

But there are variables that statement is leaving out. For example if your hive is well insulated could bees maintain a high enough temp in the hive to keep doing other activities and not be clustered? This would mean 40F is not the magic number for a well insulated hive and the whole graph would be shifted to the left. Which is beneficial if you expect temps under that new magic number in your region.

More insulation does not necessarily mean less ventilation. That depends on your set up.